Cycle Aware Wellington recently published an excellent blog in which Wellington City mayoral and council candidates were asked a range of questions exploring their views on cycling. You should definitely read their responses but I wanted to get a clearer picture of who the more 'bike-friendly' candidates are overall and how they compare to each other. To do this I invited a panel of Wellington cyclists to rate the quality of every candidates answer to every question on a 5 point scale. The higher the score the better, with a maximum possible average score for each question, and in total, of 5 out of 5.

In determining the overall quality of the answer the panel were asked to focus on the degree to which the answer demonstrates:a) general support for cycling, and/orb) an empathy for cycling and cyclists, and/orc) an understanding of cycling related issues, and/ord) a willingness to make hard decisions in order to promote cycling and/or grow cycling numbers

Here's the results but please make sure you also read the notes below:​

Overall results for mayoral candidates and council candidates by ward

This slideshow shows the overall score for each mayoral candidate and each council candidate by ward. Hover over the slideshow to use the controls.

​​Results by question for all mayoral and council candidates

This gallery shows the score for every mayoral and council candidate by question. Click on the image to enlarge.

​Overall question scores

This chart shows the overall score by question. It gives a sense of which questions the panel thought candidates collectively answered well and not so well (scores are out of 5).

​​Notes​

These results are a reflection of the panel members ratings only. They are indicative, not conclusive.

The results are not a recommendation on who to vote for. The results should be considered alongside other analysis such as Cycle Aware Wellington's examination of current councillors' voting records on cycling and candidates' policies on other matters.

The overall score weights every question evenly but in reality the answers to some questions are likely to be far more revealing than others. The ratings for the individual questions are also published so that readers can determine their own priorities.

Jo Coughlan replied to Cycle Aware Wellington's questions but too late to be included in the survey. You can make your own assessment of her answers by reading the original blog.

Any other candidate who doesn't appear in the ratings did not respond to Cycle Aware Wellington's questionnaire.

Thanks to Cycle Aware Wellington for running the questionnaire in the first place.

Thanks also to the panel of cyclists who completed the survey. This involved rating over 300 individual answers each, a tremendous effort!